Reflection: Weeks 15 and 16

We are finally done with this class! WOOHOO!!!! I am both excited and a little bit sad about this. This class has probably been one of my favorite classes. I have learned so much about the environment, and have really grown as a person. I have really loved having all of you in my web group, and have really enjoyed getting to know all of you.

Now on to the reflection...

During week 15 we had our last Advocacy assignment. We were assigned to make an online learning activity for the rest of our web group to complete in order for them to learn more about our topics. I found this assignment to be kind of challenging. It was harder then I thought to find interactive activities online. I now appreciate what teacher do more than I did before. This week we also had Sue Whitney come in to talk to us about junking. Sue seemed like a really great, down to earth women. On the last day of class we got to go outside and reflect on the class. This was a really fun way to end the class.

Week 16 was finals week so we didn't meet in class, but we still had assignments. We had to complete our last Eye Opener assignment, which was just doing all of the interactive activities that our web group made for us, and then writing a little bit about each one. This Eye Opener was really easy for me because I accidentally did all of the activities for the last Advocacy post instead of waiting until this week. Oh well...this way I got to do them twice. This week was just a wrap up week. I finished all of my Share and Voices and caught up on all of my commenting. Overall, it was a very relaxing week.

Well thanks for reading.

Have a Great Day!!!

Share and Voice: Recycle Caps With Aveda

I am really excited about this last share and voice for a couple of reasons. Of course I am excited about it because I feel like it is an interesting topic, but I am even more excited about this environmental issue because it came from an unlikely source, Aveda Salons.

They are choosing to do something about a serious recycling issue. Currently, most plastic bottle caps are not able to be recycled so they end up in landfills. Contents of the landfills often spill into our water supplies which then harms the animals that live in that area. Due to this problem, they "are building a new recycling program for plastic bottle caps in which caps are collected at stores and schools and then sent by Aveda to their recycler where the material is recycled into new caps and containers. Aveda has been able to work closely with their suppliers to develop ways to make new caps and containers from the recycled caps." Go to the website to read more about the type of plastic tops they are collecting. You can bring them to any Aveda Store/Salon and they will be repurposed into Aveda packaging. How cool!

To read the article go to: http://aveda.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.asp

Have a Great Day!!!

Eye Opener: Online Learning Activites

Valerie:Health Care Wheel of Fortune
For her game you needed to guess different letters to make up basic health care words. I did horribly on her game, but had a lot of fun doing it. It was really fun to go back to the basics, and try to figure out fun medical words. I think that this game would be a fun way for kids to start learning about health care.

Shannon: The Food Groups Game
Her quiz was focused on teaching kids the food groups. This went along well with her Advocacy topic. The object of the quiz was to drag and drop different foods into their correct food groups. I got 100% on her quiz and had a lot of fun taking it. I really enjoyed the "happy dance" that the food groups did after their servings were full. I think that young children would have a blast with this quiz.

Sam:Healthy Kids Quiz
Her quiz was also made for kids, and was focused on teaching them the importance of a healthy diet. After each question you answered you got some more information on each question, and if you got a question wrong, that you were able to go back and try again. I think that it is really important for children to get a second try. I feel that children would learn a lot from this quiz.

Noah: Health IT Puzzle
His activity was on Health Care Information Technology. He decided to create a crossword puzzle about this subject. I think that that was really creative him, and I am very impressed with his work. I was unfortunately unable to get his link to work on my computer. I think that you need some special software to download his crossword, but I bet it was really interesting and informative. I think that Noah's topic is one that I would like to learn more about, because it is something that could really affect our future.


Great Job to Everyone! All of your activities were FUN!


Have a Great Day!!!

Share and Voice: How Eau Claire is Going GREEN

So I went to Eau Claire, WI this weekend to visit my best friend and my sister. I told them about the stuff that we are learning in class, and asked if there was anything environmentally cool that was going on at their school.

I found out that Eau Claire is going completely tray free at all of their dining locations starting this fall. Christian Wise, one of the leaders of this movement was interviewed for this news article and shared some really interesting facts. Wise shared that, "trays account for a significant portion of our dishwashing — more than 6,000 are cleaned each day on campus, resulting in more than 396,000 gallons of water being used for this one purpose only." "Going trayless lessens the environmental impact we generate here on campus. A significant amount of water and electricity is saved, food waste is diverted from landfills and, above all, we make a small dent in reducing carbon emissions."

The best part is that students are really supportive of this movement. The article ended with a list of other things that Eau Claire is doing to be environmentally friedly. So please check out this article and read more about what Eau Claire is doing to help the environment.

Please go to this link to read the news article. This article is really interesting and pretty short: http://www.uwec.edu/newsreleases/09/apr/0403trayless.htm The article also includes contact information for Christian Wise if you have any questions.

I find this really inspirational. I hope that UMD can follow in Eau Claire's footsteps. What a great idea!
I hope you enjoyed reading!!!

Have a Great Day!!!

Share and Voice: Meal Time Challenge

Ok, so I realize that spring break was ages ago, but I still want to share with you guys something cool that happened while I was on my trip. Over Spring Break this year, I went to Gulfport, Mississippi, to participate in a service trip doing hurricane relief for the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We did this service trip through PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance). PDA has Volunteer Villages that people can stay in. They can hold up to 90 volunteers a week. Since they get so many people volunteering, they decided to do something about their excessive waste.

Their solution to this problem was simple, yet very beneficial. They asked us all to save our plastic cups that we used at every meal, and save our paper bags that we put our lunches in. This made a huge difference. Instead of me going through three plastic cups a day, I only needed to go through a couple during the entire week. The same thing happened with the paper bags. Instead of me using a different paper bag every day, I reused two for the whole week. The amount that I saved doesn’t really seem like a big deal; I saved roughly three paper bags, and roughly five or six plastic cups in that week. But now, take that amount of cups and bags saved, and multiply it by the 80 people who were there with me that week. That is a ton of waste that was saved. And even better, think about how many cups and paper bags PDA saves in a month, or even a year. This is amazing! I was so excited to hear that even though PDA is such a big organization, that they were still concerned about saving the environment.

Now I explained what we did that week…so lets talk about what we all can do to minimize our waste during the meal times.

• Silverwear: You can either use metal silverwear at your meals, or save the plastic silverwear that you get at the food court and reuse them the next time you eat.
• Napkins: If you take too many napkins when you go out to a restauraunt, take the extras home with you to use at your next meal.
• Lunch Bags: If you use paper bags to pack your lunch, reuse them until they rip. Or even better, invest in an insulated lunch box, that you can reuse for an extremely long time.
• Bring Your Own Food to School: The school must repackage everything in order to get them into personal servings. This produces a lot of waste.

Everything that I mentioned above will not only help in reducing waste, but it will also help you save some money; so why don't you try to help the environment and yourself out, and try to do one of the suggestions above to save waste.



To learn more about the organization that I volunteered through, you can go the the PDA website at: http://www.pcusa.org/pda/index.htm


You can also go to My Zero Waste and read the article, "How to pack a reduced waste lunch box". This article has a bunch of really cool suggestions.


Have a Great Day!!!

Advocacy Project: Discovery Health: Stop Smoking Quiz

I have always felt strongly against smoking. I really have no idea how this began, but I just know that it has always been something that I am interested in standing up against. I feel that the consequences of smoking are too destructive for both the smoker, and the innocent bystanders. I feel that it is important for everyone to have a basic knowledge of the effects of smoking, so that us why I chose to do my advocacy project on this issue.

I had a really hard time finding an interactive activity about smoking, and when I did find something, it was for Kindergartners, and asked questions like....is smoking bad for you? I was a little frustrated, but then I found another quiz that was for adults, and it had some really great questions. I learned a lot from taking this quiz, so I felt like it would be a great interactive learning activity. Please take the quiz and read the additional information that comes up with the answers. I bet you will learn something new. Please write down the most interesting thing that you learned by taking this quiz.

To take this quiz go to this link: http://health.discovery.com/centers/addiction/smoking/quiz/smokingquiz.html

For more information on smoking and second hand smoking, please go to....

• What Smoking Does To Your Body: There is another link at the bottom of this website that is about what smoking does to your loved ones. I think that link is really cool as well.
  
• Facts on Passive Second Hand Smoking: This one is intended for youth, but I feel like it has a lot of really good basic informaiton for you to all know about second hand smoking.
• Smoking may be Banned in Cars: I included this link becuase it is the exact focus of my Advocacy Project. This link is really cool because there are extra links that allow you to test your knowledge.
  

I hope you all learned a lot! Thanks for doing my activity!


Have a Great Day!!!

Advocacy Project: Letter to Public Official

May 15th, 2009
Senator Amy Klobuchar
U.S. Senate
302 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Senator Klobuchar,

I am writing to you because I am concerned about the health of children. Smoking has become a problem that not only affects the person who is smoking, but also effects innocent bystanders. Too often the innocent bystanders are the children of the parents who smoke. Second hand smoke is even more detrimental to a child's health because their developing lungs are more susceptible to damage. I realize that people have the right to smoke, but I feel that they do not have the right to make other people sick from it. According to American's for Nonsmokers' Rights (ANR), second hand smoking can have the following affects on children: low birth weight, higher rates of SIDS, cognitive impairments, respiratory problems, asthma, and other repercussions as an adult. Some even view smoking around children as child abuse. I feel that it is our responsibility to look out for their rights until they can. I read in an article from abc News "that the concentrations of tobacco smoke in cars will frequently be three to five times what they are in offices or in a bar". With this information, it seems obvious that something needs to be done. I feel that there should be a ban on parents smoking in the car with their children.

Other states such as California, Maine, Louisiana, and Arkansas have already passed laws on this exact issue, and it has gone over fairly well, even with parents who smoke. If it can work in other states, I feel that it will be able to work in Minnesota. I hope that you will write a piece of legislation that will ban smoking in cars with children. With your help, children will have a better chance of living a life without the consequences of second hand smoke. You can help make children healthier and happier.

Sincerely,

Sara H


Have a Great Day!!!

Share and Voice: Enviro-Cool Award

I would like to thank Derek for giving me the Enviro-Cool Award for my Share and Voice on the Fourth Annual City-Wide Spring Sweep.

I am excited to pass this award on to Christen for her Share and Voice on the ESG Highway Cleanup. I as well am a part of Eta Sigma Gamma (ESG) and was unfortunately unable to make it to the highway cleanup, so I am really excited to hear that Christen did a Share and Voice on her experience doing it. I think that picking up trash is such a great way to make the environment better. I think that it is very respectful for people to pick up other people's trash. Way to go! Check out her post!


Award Instructions

1. Leave a comment below so that I know you "picked up" the award.
2. Create a Share and Voice post that says you've received the award and indicate who the award is from (be sure to hyperlink).
3. Also indicate to whom you are going to pass on the award and why. Be sure to hyperlink the blogger (use main blog URL) and the blog title (use the specific URL for that blog post).
4. Copy and paste these instructions at the bottom of your post.
5. Publish the post.
6. Visit each blogger you've awarded and leave a comment telling them they've won.
7. Continue the process...


Have a Great Day!!!

Reflection: Weeks 13 and 14

Yet another two weeks have come and gone. I cannot believe that we only have two more weeks left of this class. This class has really wound down, which I am really grateful for. I was really sick last week, so I am a little behind on some assignments, but I will be getting them done this weekend. Sorry group!

During week 13 we watched the short movie, The Story of Stuff, which explains how the accumulation of "stuff occurs". We also went to Bagley Nature Area this week to learn how to navigate with compasses. That was really fun for me because I had never learned how to use a compass before. I always just thought that it was used to find north; I had no idea about finding your bearing, or anything else like that. This day of class was really fun because we got to get out of the classroom and do something different. Our assignment for this week was to do the third part of our Advocacy Project: Issue Overview.

During week 14 we had someone come in to talk to us about his work with Americore. This was extremely interesting to me because I have just recently become very interested in joining Americore or the Peace Core for a few years after I graduate. We also had a really fun "Junking" challenge this week in class. It was really fun to see what kinds of ideas each web group came up with. I also thought it was really fun to work with our group, because we really haven't gotten to know eachother that much in class. Our assignment for this week was to do the fourth part of our Advocacy Project: Letter to the Public Official.

Well thanks for reading! I hope you all have a wonderfull weekend! See ya in class on Tuesday!

Have a Great Day!!!